Preparing the substrate for flooring installation

Nat­ur­ally, you want your par­quet, car­pet or lux­ury vinyl floor­ing to have a long ser­vice life. For this reas­on, prop­er sub­strate pre­par­a­tion is abso­lutely essen­tial before installing the floor­ing. Here, we will explain how it’s done and why it’s so import­ant.

1. Check the subfloor

Not every floor is in such good con­di­tion that you can dir­ectly cov­er it with the new floor­ing of choice. Pri­or to install­a­tion, the sub­floor should be care­fully checked wheth­er it is ready to receive floor­ing. If the sur­face is uneven, brittle or moist, this can later have a dam­aging effect on the floor­ing. The car­pet may devel­op waves and bumps, cracks may appear in the PVC tiles, and par­quet or cork may break in the tongue or groove area.

2. Clean the subfloor

As a gen­er­al rule, the sub­floor must always be thor­oughly cleaned. It should be com­pletely free of plaster, paint, oil or grease residues.

3. Prime the subfloor

Mois­ture from the sub­strate can cause dam­age to car­pets, tiles and oth­er kinds of floor­ing. It is there­fore abso­lutely neces­sary to apply a bar­ri­er primer before installing the floor­ing. This effect­ively pro­tects the sub­floor against mois­ture, has a strength­en­ing effect and binds remain­ing sur­face dust. Import­ant: Only use very low-emis­­sion primers. If you look out for the EMICODE^® seal, you will ensure a health­i­er liv­ing envir­on­ment.